Cj210

What are the methods of inquiry and how are they used by an investigator. The methods of inquiry are who, what, where, when, why and how. An investigator will need to use these effectively to do his or her job to its fullest. Everyone uses these on an ever day basis, when you see something you naturally want to know the rest of these things. As an investigator getting this information through crime scene investigation or outside of the scene investigation, for example finding peoples names at local pawnshops can help the investigator find the suspect if they sold stolen product. Optimal mindset for an investigator is when he or she uses the methods of inquiry to create a hypothesis or an idea of who, what, where, when, why and how. Wether it is getting an idea of what he or she looks like through witnesses or finding stolen merchandise at a pawn shop and getting a name or a face from that. Basically it’s using the correct mindset to get a lead in your investigation. Scientific method in criminal investigation is when you take the previous optimal mindset hypothesis and testing it to see if it is correct. Also working with your hypothesis to make it better using further investigation. However sometimes your hypothesis is incorrect. If that happens that it means you have to go back and start it over again until you have solved the problem and the case. The three primary sources of information for investigators are informant(paid and unpaid), documentary source information and physical source information. The informant can be a great source of information if you have the right informant. They can give you great information or bad information depending on the informant. Documentary source information is a perfect place to get information, examples of this would be like the CIA, FBI or even a state office allowing you historical data. Physical source information

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